A forty-something cab driver and fan of detective fiction from Hicksville, Long Island, who suddenly snaps (after picking up a fare by the name of Charlie Flitcraft, for you Hammett fans) and thinks he's Red Diamond, a Race Williams-like private eye, straight out of the pulps.

Was he nuts? Or just eccentric? In Tenspeed and Brownshoe, a fondly remembered (but short-lived 1980 television show), Jeff Goldblum made his debut as the very naive, bored, terminally-square stockbroker who, with the aid of a motormouth con artist (Ben Vereen), made his fantasies of becoming a hardboiled private eye (just like his hero, Mark Savage) come true.